Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I feel I have to make a couple of comments for the record.

First of all, the whole principle behind the New Deal was to put more autonomy into the communities, allowing the communities to make decisions that affected their communities. We rolled out a new capital program that included the money for the chipseal. This is factored into their capital dollars. We negotiated for new gas tax funding to be flexible enough to be utilized on chipseal. There is a lot of chipseal, and there is a lot of ability for communities to apply chipseal and to plan for it.

We still have kept all our support mechanisms to help the communities move forward. We’re seeing that a number of communities are planning to do chipseal in the whole community now, not just one stretch of Main Street. I think we’re going to start to see more of that as communities really get more focused and more organized.

It will be a challenge to pull the money back. We’re already putting in a hand to the communities. How do we tell the communities: The government has decided that you shouldn’t make your own decisions anymore.; we’ll do that for you and reduce the capital. I don’t think it would be well

received within the communities, and I encourage Members to really consider what the outcome of this motion would mean.